The 9th Mission Support Command (MSC) successfully showcased the impressive work of eight interns from the University of Hawaii (UH) at Manoa and Chaminade University, as they worked on separate projects to solve real-world problems.

The internship provided students with hands-on experience in intelligence analysis, coding, data science, and innovation. This internship initiative signified successful collaborations between academia, industry, and government, fostering talent and innovation.

During the first half of calendar year 2023, the 9th MSC developed an Internship SOP (standard operating procedure), Intern Code of Conduct and Agreement contracts, and began to network with local academia and unique industry partners like the DoD’s funded National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) at UH-Manoa and the Pacific Intelligence Innovation Initiative (P3I) at Chaminade University, a congressionally funded program that supports Hawaii workforce development through paid internships.

Both programs may allow students to earn course credit and the chance to serve their country in their local community by helping to solve real-world national security problems by collaborating with the U.S. military, in this case, the 9th MSC, an Army Reserve organization. A primary goal is to connect the Army Reserve with college aged youth in a positive learning environment while incorporating communities and local industry partners.

The interns presented their final projects to the 9th MSC Commanding General, Brig. Gen. Mark Siekman, at Fort Shafter Flats on December 5 and 6, followed by a project day showcased at UH on December 7.

The first semester of the “Hanai” Internship Program resulted in a total of eight interns during the Fall semester of 2023 from two different academic programs (UH-Manoa and Chaminade University) that included six of the eight coming from the NSIN Program and another two from the P3I Program.

There were two different intern teams selected from UH-Manoa, each assigned a problem-set/capstone project. Two interns focused on developing a commanders dashboard, providing a centralized platform to save commanders’ time, while four interns focused on creating an Army Reserve Talent Marketplace to effectively advertise critical job vacancies.

The projects encompassed various areas, including a web-based interactive dashboard visualizing the readiness and availability of Army Reserve units in the Pacific region, and natural language processing system generating summaries from unstructured text.

UH’s Information and Computer Sciences Department (ICS) event on December 7 at the Campus Center Ballroom showcased the technical and creative work of its students and featured 24 poster presentations. These presentations highlighted projects of 23 capstone students who collaborated in teams to develop 10 software systems for their sponsors, including the 25th Infantry Division (ID), 9th MSC, Naval Postgraduate School, California State University (Northridge), and the Hawaii Digital Health Lab.
Awards presentation was held at the end of the event, 9th MSC’s Talent Marketplace capstone project was awarded best project, marking the first time a team won this honor in the ICS 496 class.

Submitted projects are not automatically selected when submitted to a UH Capstone course with the UH Innovations & Commercialization, NSIN Internship program. Professors provide an option to students to choose a project of choice the first week of semester. The following students selected both 9th MSC’s submitted projects for the 2023 Fall semester: Trey Yasunaga and Marissa Halim – Computer Science Interns, 9th MSC Marketing, Recruiting and Retention (MR2) sponsor. Mahie Crabbe, Christine Nakano, Kristine Rivera, and Taryn Takebayashi – Computer Science Interns, 9th MSC Talent Management (TM) sponsor.

This program was made possible through collaboration between the 9th MSC’s Marketing, Recruiting and Retention (MR2) and Talent Management (TM), Hawaii Defense Alliance, Pacific Intelligence Innovation Initiatives (P3I), National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), and UH at Manoa.